


the Starriest Hearts Have the Darkest Starts

by silenth



Series: Time is what you make of it [5]
Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, Love Stories, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28781982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silenth/pseuds/silenth
Summary: A series focused on Alice and Jasper's life with the Cullens. If there were a word that meant "sweet and fluffy little drabbles," I could just type that here and you'd already be done reading this sentence.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Carlisle Cullen/Esme Cullen, Emmett Cullen/Rosalie Hale
Series: Time is what you make of it [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953487
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	1. Presents in the Present Tense

Alice loves shopping. 

More, she loves having things. It was never hard to figure out that it was because of how she began, waking alone and nameless in the dark, with nothing but a tattered gown and a hunger she couldn't name. 

Jasper always thinks it's funny when people dismiss her as superficial or flighty - she's not either. She's the least selfish person he's ever known; she loves buying things for other people as much as she does for herself. 

Back when they had first come to the Cullens, Edward told her all the flattering things the kids at school thought about the way they dressed now, and Carlisle said he suspected they were the best dressed coven in the world. "Even the nurses at the hospital have commented on those new suits you bought for me, Alice."

"Wait until you see what I have planned for the spring!" she bounced on the couch, holding up her stack of sketches and fabric swatches. 

And if anyone admired something she had on, forget it. He remembered a day in the '60s when she gave her turquoise beaded moccasins to a homeless girl in the park and still raced him home barefoot through the trees. 

"Oh, Alice, you loved those shoes," Esme remarked sadly when she ran into the house, her muddy footprints so small on Esme's Oriental rug. 

"Yes, but now I have excuse to buy another pair." 

The only things she's sentimental about are the gifts the family has given her. The first-edition books Edward hunted down through the years and then passed along with his faux nonchalant air. A silver locket from Esme and Carlisle, engraved with the month and date that she and Jasper married. Photographs Esme had taken, close-ups of their faces so the fashion wouldn't betray them as the decades passed. Rosalie and Emmett bought them a huge bed on their tenth wedding anniversary, with an elaborate headboard carved from marble. 

"And the best part, almost like new," Emmett snickered. "We barely used it!"

Jasper whirled his head around to glare at him and even Alice wrinkled her nose. "He's _joking_ ," Rosalie kept telling them as Emmett pressed his face into her hip and laughed so hard it was soundless, but who really knew with those two.

And the things she treasures most, she keeps in an old wooden bread box scavenged from a deserted farmhouse outside Philadelphia: an old fork with one missing tine, Jasper's letters from the rare times they had been apart, the flowers he carved for her out of rocks and wood because she hated watching flowers die, the ribbon she wore in her hair the day they finally met.

He remembers the first thing he carved for her.  
  
  


He was downstairs, enjoying the typical family scene unfolding around him. Emmett had taken up the violin, an obsession that lasted about two months, and he and Edward were playing some kind of Irish two-step in the corner. Rosalie was marking up one of Carlisle's medical journals. Esme had her feet in Carlisle's lap and he was watching her embroider, so fast her hands were a pale blur as a delicate pattern of swallows and leaves appeared on the fabric, as if by magic.

And Alice, his beautiful Alice - he could hear her in their room upstairs, the rustle of the sheets as she stood up and took out her hunting clothes. He thought idly about rushing upstairs before she could finish getting dressed and Edward looked out the window. _Sorry,_ Jasper thought back. 

Edward didn't look over, just shrugged in response, his fingers falling still on the keys. "We're going hunting tonight, aren't we?" 

"Mmm," Carlisle murmured. "I suppose we should get ready if Alice is coming down."

"What are you working on there, Jasper?" Esme asked, tilting her head and staring at his hands. His fingers were working quick and steady, his lap covered with bits of sawdust.

"Probably a gift for Alice," Emmett commented. "He only works on it when she's not around."

"Ooh, for me?" Alice appeared in front of him. "Really? I wonder why--"

"I haven't decided to give it to you yet. I wasn't sure how it would come out." Jasper wrapped his hands around the small item and folded his carving knife up. "I still haven't. So don't try to peek."

"Honey," she exclaimed, "I want to see. I'm going to love it. I don't _know_ that, but I know I will."

He glanced at the rest of the family and Esme and Carlisle exchanged a look and rose. "Well, we should--"

"Right," Edward said and he was gone before they were. Emmett and Rosalie left too, absorbed in each other, as always. 

"It's not much, Alice. Don't get too excited. I only wanted to--" He unfolded his hand and she stared at the small, immaculately carved reproduction of the diner where they had met. She could see the outlines of their heads through the window, sitting at that little table. Some day they would go back there and sit there again.

"Oh, Jasper." Her emotions fell against his mind like the gentlest rain, soaking him in that bottomless love she offered up every day, her most effortless and magical gift. "It's us. The best moment of my life." 

"The beginning of mine." He kissed her knuckles and she blinked away the memories in her eyes. 

"All thanks to me," she hummed, happiness in her throat and emanating out of each perfect pore. 

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you for that day, darlin'." She rocked him back on the couch and stretched out on top of him, and he marveled again at how such a small woman could overwhelm him with the force of her emotions, the particular flavor of her throat. How she could be so open and yielding against him even as she demanded every bit of his body and soul and claimed them for her own. 

They were very, very late for hunting that night. 

Today the little carved diner still sits in that old box, years after the building itself has crumbled. He watches from their huge bed, leaning against their marble headboard, as she picks it up and strokes it lovingly.

"Thank you for this, Jasper," she turns to him suddenly, her love and joy and hope crashing over his mind like the first time all over again. 

"What are you going to do when you run out of room in that box?" Jasper has been working on another bit of woodcarving, a life-size depiction of their hands curled together. It's hard to capture all the life in her small hand, the way it pulses with energy even as it lays still against his, but he thought he almost had it. 

"Let you buy me another one," she laughs.


	2. The Beauty of Our Names

1957 

It started in a department store in Connecticut. A man wearing a pearl white suit with violet lining got on the escalator behind them and when Alice complimented his clothes, he spent the rest of the ride flirting with her and leaning over to look down her dress. 

Edward had to grab Jasper's shoulders to keep him from leaping over Esme and Alice's heads and ripping out the man's heart. 

When he got off at the ground floor, unaware how close he had come to death, he tipped his hat to Alice and said, "Have a good evening, kitten."

Rosalie growled at his back and even Esme looked vaguely disgusted (which for Esme was tantamount to vomitous loathing). Then Emmett turned to Alice and said in a dead-on impression of the man's nasally New England drone, "Kitten, would you like to trade places so you can stand next to your honeybunch?" It made Jasper lose his glower for a moment and they quickly whisked him away.

After that, Emmett, Rosalie, and even Edward would tease Alice by calling her kitten. Jasper hated it but Alice felt it was a good sign - they were supposed to be her sister and brothers, after all. As far as she could tell, teasing was what siblings did. 

"Regardless, I am _clearly_ not a kitten," she muttered one night as she and Jasper laid in bed. 

"Of course not." She had been stroking his hair while they talked and his voice had gone drowsy and soft as mist. They didn't sleep, of course, but nothing could get Jasper closer to it than when Alice played with his hair. If she twisted the wet strands around her fingers it would dry into ringlets. He would have to brush them out in the morning before he left the room or Emmett would call him a cherub.

"What's the first word that comes to mind when _you_ think of me?" She stared at him quizzically. After all, no one knew her better.

"Word association again?" Jasper asked, rousing himself to prop his head against the headboard. 

She smiled. It was a game they played occasionally, when she wondered about her past. Jasper would give her a word and she would have to say the first thing that came to mind, to see if they could uncover any memories. 

The best way to find a memory is not to seek it, Carlisle had told her, so they kept trying every few months. Sometimes Alice would remember something random: fresh milk in a chipped teacup, clipping a pink rose in fragrant full bloom, gooseflesh and bruises on her thin arms. The memories had a fragile, translucent glow to them, like they were glazes applied to an empty space. She wasn't sure if they were her past or her future or simple wishful thinking.

"All right. I'll start this time." She shifted one leg to straddle his rib cage, loving the way her bones fit around his longer and wider ones. She pulled her silk kimono off one shoulder and stared at him seductively. "Kittens."

"Milk," he replied quickly.

"Cows."

"Texas."

"Jasper."

Once he would have responded with _killer_ or _soldier_ , _cursed_ or _suffering._ She could see those words in the scars on his skin, and every so often she saw them in his red eyes. But tonight, in their room and their bed, he said something else.

"Alice," he said slowly, drawing her name out and she shivered at the shape of his mouth. 

(When they finally met, she wanted to cry when she saw him say it in person for the first time, the way his cautious dark eyes darted away from her, as though he didn't believe she would let him call her anything else but ma'am. 

Before that moment, the force of her own feelings had scared her. She worried he wouldn't return them, because in some worlds, he was so damaged that he couldn't, at least not for a long time. Her visions went dim when she tried to follow that path to its conclusion. 

But she watched him say _Alice_ and her name in his voice was the spell that drove away her fears. 

She made herself wait a whole week before she turned to him in a hotel room and asked him if he would do something for her. He wrapped his hands around her tiny waist and told her anything, everything. "Will you-- will you say my name over and over?" 

He had smiled a little, almost a smirk, and she thought he might tease her, but then he took her hands in his and pressed them against his heart. He said, "Alice" and it felt as huge and encompassing as holy waters closing over her head. Like his hands were lifting her into a new world-- or a new her into the world, her last transformation. _There she is, look look, see her smiling under the water!_ She is His Alice, for the first time and for whatever came after this world. Even if it was nothing, somehow they would be nothing together. 

He bent then, watching her eyes, and placed his lips on the side of her neck - "Alice." On her sternum, the creases of her elbows, her sharp hipbones, her calves, up one side and down the other. Her own fingers slipped between her thighs and she was aching and wet. He kissed the back of her hand as she worked at herself and she felt it more than heard it - the movement of his tongue on the L and the hiss of breath on the "sss." "Alice. _Alice._ " The bliss spilled into her so abruptly she forgot all her language and couldn't make a sound, tilting her head back and gaping at the ceiling as he knelt at her feet and bit her thigh. 

Then a few days later, he asked her, a little bashful, if she would do the same thing to him.)

"Alice as an animal!" she said now, wondering if he was remembering the same nights she was. There had been so many of them now, long lovely nights and days stacked up like cards in a deck, fanning out 'til eternity.

"Yes please," he laughed. He nipped at the slice of her chest exposed by her kimono and she pushed him back down, holding his shoulders to the bed. 

She folded her lips to hide her smile. "A serious answer, if you would!"

He thought for a moment. Then, "A raven," he declared, brushing his hand over her dark hair. 

"A bird? That's as bad as a kitten!" She bounced off him, kneeling on the mattress. She grimaced. "If you even think the words 'little bird bones,' Jasper--"

"My Alice? Never. She is a raven with bones made of diamonds and rubies and emeralds. The heaviest bones and the lightest heart."

Momentarily appeased, she studied his pleased face. "Well, maybe."

"Besides," he continued, "I read once that ravens mate for life. And that some culture revere them as godlike creatures." 

She softened. "All right, a beautiful raven, with golden down under her feathers. Your Alice sounds quite special," she said with a playful tilt to her head. 

"Yes, ma'am," he sat up and wrapped his hands in the ties of her kimono (so long because she's so thin) and pulled her toward him - ceaseless and inexorable, the way she had first lured him to her with her will and her hope. "There's no one else in the world to compare with my Alice," he bragged. "The sweetest, bravest feelings I've ever felt in a mind." 

"But is she good to you?"

"There could be none better. She's the only one mad enough to cast her lot in with someone like me." He settled her against him, his hands pulling her legs open and wrapping them around his bare hips.

"Oh, she's mad now, is she? I thought you said she was brave!" she chided, pinching the skin of his chest between her fingers.

"Courage is a kind of madness. Do you know what my mad Alice did to me once?" he asked her as he nibbled her neck and she dropped teasing, considering sounds in his curls. "She said my name one hundred and sixty-three times and she kissed me with each one." He bent his knees behind her and brought her closer still. His body everywhere, behind her, against her, over and in front, his fingers working her robe open. "When I was in her mouth, trying not to beg, she drew it out, wrote my name on my stomach with her sharp little nails."

Alice sunk her nails into his back, scraping the muscles next to his spine. 

"She's so good at it, every time," he whispered, peeling the silk from her back and touching the even-softer skin beneath. "And that day, when she finished, she said it again. Then she licked her lips." His voice came from the deepest part of the night, slow searching fingers making promises, and Alice rocked against him, not willing to wait much longer. His lust was like a tsunami sometimes, roaring forward and wiping out the rest of the world. He could overcome her until her cells were flooded with his feelings and his scent. And then she could look in his eyes and see herself inside him. Sometimes they shared so much it was the next best thing to trading bodies.

"Oh my," Alice sighed, leaning forward to lick his lips this time. "She must be remarkable-- and so well-loved. But how does she fly with all those gems inside her?" 

"Magic." He lowered his avid mouth to her chest, blowing a cool stream of air over her until her nipples rosed a deeper pink and her thumbs dug into his scapulas. He liked to draw things out himself sometimes, to stretch out against her while making her lie perfectly still, until her hips arched from only the slick heat of his mouth and the pressure of his fingertips. "I met my Alice on a rainy day and she magicked my lonely life away."

"She did," Alice whispered back, rising and then sinking down on him like a burning sun. "And it was the best magic of her life."


	3. Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jasper and Emmett get bad news with their senior class. A little Emmett POV of his brother and Alice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've thought about posting a similar scene from Alice's POV. Let me know if you'd like to see it!

1977, Maine

It was a roaring autumn thunderstorm, rain so hard their windshield wipers couldn't keep up, and a poorly-maintained backwater highway. A carload full of teenagers drove off the road and hit a tree. All four of them were killed instantly - no need for a rush to the hospital in Portland. The road was flooded out and they might not have made it anyway.

Edward Cullen and his (what? no one in town could ever remember exactly) his brother-in-law's niece, Rosalie Hale had gotten permission to intern at the county coroner's office that semester. She was prickly and he was punctilious but they were both undeniably knowledgeable when it came to anatomy, and neither of them were squeamish when it came to handling dead bodies. A little strange, but it probably came from being raised by the doctor. 

They drove out with the coroner, to help do the grunt work of lifting and bagging after he identified the bodies, but Dr. Cullen intercepted them when they pulled up at the scene. He thought it might be too upsetting for them, and it was true, they did look disturbed, turning their heads away from the mutilated car and bodies. Their hair was plastered to their heads -- the rain hadn't let up, but neither of them shivered. The girl's hands were fisted at her side. 

Dr. Cullen told them to drive his car back home, and he would assist with the bodies himself.

As they walked away, one of the troopers thought he heard something like, "Too bad it wasn't us," from the boy, but that didn't make any sense.

"Sure is gonna be hard on all the kids," the coroner said as she peeled off her gloves and tossed them on the roadside. Another trooper held the umbrella over her as she wrestled out a cigarette and struggled to light it.

Carlisle grimaced and nodded under his own umbrella. He had blood on his shoes and he would have to wash them off before he went home. "Yes, I'm sure it will be quite difficult." But there's nothing we can do about that now, his eyes finished.

The dead teenagers-- Amy and Clark, Wayne and Jeannette, two couples-- were driving to school that morning, their small high school and even tinier senior class. Only 40 students total, and now four of them were gone.

As Carlisle stood in the rain and the uniformed officers carried the news through town to four sets of parents, the remaining seniors filed into the school's damp-smelling gym, the rain hammering on the roof. Their principal, a man who looked exactly like President William Howard Taft (Jasper had seen him from a distance when he came to El Paso in 1909), told them what had happened. 

There was a moment of silence, the heavy kind that arrives when something is shattered, and then the sobs started, the shrieks and the cries, the instant denials.

Emmett grimaced and leaned against the back wall. He had memories of these four; it was such a small school he was sure everyone did. Amy sat in front of him in English every year because it was alphabetical - Clark, Cullen-- and she was so nervous around him she quivered like a bunny every time he shifted, his desk groaning under his weight. And Wayne had actually been a good enough basketball player - almost a challenge to Emmett when he made himself play like a human. Poor kids.

He and Jasper would have created a natural bubble of space around themselves no matter where they sat, but they always sat in the top row. Normally Rose would be next to him. He hoped she hadn't gotten called out to clean up all the bodies. The county coroner was usually safe for her and Edward. Most people around these parts died of old age or heart attacks or drinking. A suicide by pills a few months ago. Whatever it was, as long as there wasn't too much blood, she and Edward could control themselves. 

The principal explained that the school counselor would remain in the gym for anyone who needed help, and the rest of them were excused for the rest of the day, but the kids showed no signs of moving. They were huddled in their packs, arms flung around each other like they were melting into one big mass of flesh. 

Jasper was pressing his hands into the bleacher beneath him and Emmett could hear the whine of the metal twisting and crumbling under the principal leading a prayer no one was listening to.

"Stare down and try to look somber," he told Jasper out of the side of his mouth, doing the same himself. 

Jasper obeyed him, but Emmett could feel how tightly he was coiled. He cursed silently and tried to think through his options. He wasn't as good as planning as Jasper (normal Jasper, when he wasn't being bombarded by thirty-four devastated teenagers, two teachers, a principal, and a counselor) or Carlisle, and he didn't have Alice or Edward's gifts to help him.

But he knew his own pack. He knew Jasper and what Jasper was capable of doing to escape. If it were only two or three, he would have been able to calm them, to soothe them into a kind of dulled acceptance. But this many people - there was nothing he could do but endure and try to close his mind as much as he could. 

When he had first come to the Cullens, an onslaught of emotions like this would have made him wild, he would have clawed and bitten and torn his way out of this room, unable to think about anything but escaping the pain strangling him. 

"Don't panic," Emmett whispered and thought of what they could do. There were windows above them, but they couldn't break the glass. They could try racing out of the room but there were teachers standing by one door. To get to the other, they would have to make it across the gym and lift the latch and run out and even if no one could see them going, someone would notice that they had gone. Or they could sit here until the crowd thinned out enough. He ground his teeth together. Maybe Carlisle would come, he must know about it by now. Or--

"Alice is in class. I'm sure she'll come when she can," Emmett said. He turned to Jasper and watched him closely. If the mention of Alice didn't affect him, he was worse off than Emmett thought and they would have to make a run for it, race through all the kids and hope none of them brushed against Jasper because he would snap and Emmett would have to throw him into the wall to save them--

But Jasper did seem to hear him. He lifted his hands-- Emmett winced at the scarred metal bleacher beneath them, the huge holes Jasper's fingers had made-- and curled his fists back against his wrists, tucking them into his armpits. He closed his eyes and stared at the floor. 

Emmett watched him sidelong and hoped to god his littlest sister would hurry.

They were puzzles in the beginning, his newest family members. He knew he liked them, but he had to learn to understand them. The first time he and Jasper had skirmished together, he'd clapped Jasper's back after it was over, a simple show of affection to say he hadn't minded losing to Jasper, and Jasper had whirled around, jolted toward him with his teeth bared. Emmett had leapt back, lifting his own hands, palms out, and after a few moments, Jasper had nodded and turned away. He kept his distance as they went back into the house. 

After that, Emmett was careful not to touch him when he was unaware again. Everyone else did the same. For years, Emmett knew Esme was dying to hug him, she squeezed and kissed them goodbye in the mornings on their way to school or to work, but for Jasper she simply held out her hand and he shook it, keeping his face turned toward the open door. One random morning, about two years after they had arrived, he turned to her in the morning and put one arm around her shoulder, his face still turned away. When he let go, Esme was incandescent with joy for a week.

Alice was a little better, she never outright refused to hug them, but when she did, it was awkward. He knew she had no memories of being cradled as a baby, hugged by her parents or whatever family she had come from, so how would she know how to accept that kind of affection? She embraced them with her sharp elbows facing out, keeping herself drawn up until the last moment, when she'd squeeze ferociously and dig her chin in and sigh. Then she would pull away, rubbing her hands over her arms, as though to reassure herself with her own touch.

Emmett talked about it with Rosalie, remembering the way she was when he first met her, the way she startled at anyone else's hands but his, how she resisted love even as she was longing for it, and he was able to piece together Jasper and Alice.

"They're like wild things," he said one night, as Rosalie redressed in the moonlit woods. 

"Wild--feral, more like." Even derision was beautiful on her, the beauty mark above her lip shifting as she screwed up her mouth. She looked like a disdainful Aphrodite, he thought to himself, ready to lean down and crash a thunderbolt against the earth, turn villagers into sheep for not paying her proper homage. "All those scars! There's barely any human left inside him. And her, how old could she possibly be? Fourteen, fifteen? For him to love her--"

"But he does," Emmett replied. That was the one thing he had seen from the beginning. "They're in love, Rose."

"They have powers, Em. Who knows whether creatures like that are even capable of feeling love like we do? Edward never has, has he?"

"Edward loves Esme and Carlisle. And me and you," he reminded her and she turned away, not deigning to comment on that. 

_I don't trust them_ , her long, curved back said and Emmett knew he would have to wait her out. If they were worth loving, eventually she would learn to love them, and for him, it was as plain as that. 

And she had, he thought now, with the lengthy sense of satisfaction that came from being right. 

How long had it been? Five minutes? Emmett had been studying the room from under his eyelashes while Jasper focused on the floor. The pain wasn't letting up. It was the opposite, as the shock wore off, the sadness came through even stronger, like cleaning silver with wax until it started to shine. A clear, bright pain, so evident even Emmett could feel it. 

He looked at the scene below them. Hands on wet faces, harsh gasps for breath, keening animal whimpers. 

He looked at Jasper again. His eyes were solid black, not a hint of sclera visible, and if this went on much longer, he'd end up in some place beyond pain.

Emmett had seen it once, after Jasper lost control way back in the '50s. He killed a kid, maybe nine or ten years old, after he stumbled on the little boy in a clearing in the woods. The boy was gutting a rabbit and he nicked himself with his crummy pocket knife, and the tiny cut on his palm drowned out the smell of the rabbit, like the sun overcoming a shaft of moonlight. Jasper killed him quicker than the kid had dealt with the rabbit, but afterwards, he had stayed with the body, holding it in his lap and rocking without seeming to know he was moving. 

He was a skinny kid, his ribs jutting out against his dark brown skin. Emmett thought he'd seen him hanging around the ramshackle neighborhood down by the river, always in a group of other boys with worldwise eyes and chewed down nails, holes in their shoes. 

"Lucky there weren't more of them," he had said to Jasper, intending it to be optimistic, but Jasper only stared blankly at him, holding the boy's leg out like he was waiting for someone to take it. He had ripped it off. Emmett hadn't ever killed a kid himself, but he knew women's limbs came off easier, so kids were probably even more loosely held together. 

It was a sad thing, Emmett knew, and he was gentle as he carried the boy to an abandoned house down by the river. He curled him next to a fireplace reeking of gin and piss and he started a fire and ran away with the roof snapping and sizzling behind him. 

He hoped they might conclude the boy had gone exploring and fallen asleep there, been burned up without ever realizing what was happening to him. He knew it had to stay in the boy's neighborhood. The rest of town never cared what went on there, unless the crime seeped out onto a nicer street. 

When he went back to the clearing, Jasper was still sitting there. He didn't speak for a full day. He went where Emmett pulled him, and at home, Carlisle held his hand, checked what vitals there were to be monitored. Esme and Edward and Alice had gone on a trip to see the Denali coven, and it wasn't until they returned that Jasper came back. 

"That was creepy," he said to Rosalie later, when it was the two of them alone. 

"The war," she told him briefly. "He still feels guilty about the war. It's why he gives so much of his investment profits to civil rights groups."

"Do the two of you need to talk to someone?" Mr. Lachance, their English teacher, stood four rows beneath them, staring at the wall between his head and Jasper's. He was a war veteran, Jasper told Emmett the day they walked into his classroom. 

"No, we're all right, Mr. Lachance. We're praying," Emmett threw in at the last minute. He raised his head and tried to look pious.

"Well then," he replied, one of his typical nothing responses, and wandered over to another group of kids. He never made eye contact with anyone. The kids called him Loopy behind his back, instead of Louie.

Jasper said soldiers always stood out to him - both the good ones and the bad. Their teacher had been a good one, but it left him altered in some way the man couldn't define even to himself. Emmett thought Jasper might know a little too much about that too. 

He heard the footsteps running down the hall, the way they kept speeding up up up and then forced themselves to slow down and he had to fight to keep the smile off his face. "Finally," he muttered and a second later, the door flung open and Alice scurried past the teachers. She paused long enough to murmur something appropriately sympathetic but her eyes were fixed on Jasper and Emmett. 

She hurled herself up the bleachers toward them, speaking so low and fast only they could hear. "I'msorryI'msorryIonlygotaglimpsefiveminutesbeforeithappenedandIwasinclasssoIcouldn'tdoanythingI'mhere." She sat next to Jasper and put her hands on his thigh, one hand rubbing and the other hand patting and after a few minutes, he unclenched his hand and covered one of hers. When their fingers brushed, his shoulders fell like a tumblers when a key turned in a lock. 

"I'm happy you're here, Ali Baba. I was starting to worry a little about our boy, I don't mind saying it," Emmett eased the smallest space away from Jasper, to give the two of them their space and Jasper spared him a thankful glance before he turned his attentions back to Alice. 

She was speaking to him in her clear low voice, playing a list game to relax him, and Emmett wondered when Alice thought they'd be able to leave. 

Emmett caught the quick kiss Alice brushed across Jasper's chin and hid his smile in his folded hands. "Make it look like sympathy, kitten," he advised Alice and Alice embraced Jasper, tucking his face into her tiny neck like he was too grief-stricken to be looked upon. 

Emmett noticed one or two kids eyeing them curiously, even through their tears. Jasper and Alice were usually much more circumspect with displays of affection in public - Alice must have seen something more about how bad off he was.

Of course, Emmett reflected as he tapped his fingers together and tried to remember to look like he was praying, almost everyone was more circumspect than him and Roses. Esme told him once he reminded her a of dog she had had as a child, a great big sheepdog who "ran out to greet us by putting his paws on our shoulders and panting in our faces."

Rosalie had made an awful face as Esme spoke-- she hated the smell of dogs, something to do with a place the family lived before he came-- but he took it as a compliment. Dogs were better with people than other people were; they always protected their families and greeted them with an honest sort of affection. What more could he want to be said of him than that?

He still thought it was odd, personally, that he had never stumbled upon Alice and Jasper in all the time they had lived together. Hell, he walked in on Esme and Carlisle in his office more than once. True, Alice and Jasper did shower together and he wasn't likely to walk in on that. And they moved quick when they heard someone coming. Once he happened to pass by the meadow in the woods where they were spending the day talking, and he'd seen them lying on their sides, wound around each other. Her book was propped up on his chest while he held his over her head. He even had a strand of her hair in his mouth, chewing it like it was grass, and frankly it had been a relief, to see them so close, even if all they were doing was holding onto each other and reading.

Jasper had told him once that Maria liked to fuck after a battle - when he was so full and stinking with human blood that his skin was pulled thin as gossamer. If he still had it in his hair or under his nails, all the better. She usually tasted bitter, he added like an afterthought. He had thought himself unfit for other things after that, after her. 

He brought it up while they were watching vultures pick over the remains of the animals they had killed, and that was enough to tell Emmett he didn't want to hear more.

"Here, see the teachers moving away from the door? The students are going to have a prayer circle, over there." Alice tapped Emmett's shoulder to get his attention, but Emmett had been watching their movements already. "So we can leave in a minute. And it'll be sunny tomorrow," she reassured Jasper. "A crystalline sunny day so we won't have to come back until Monday." 

"Excellent," Emmett declared with fervency. "I hope the funerals are over by then. I hate coming to school on funeral days, all the different churches make the whole school smell funny." 

He hadn't been much for churches as a human and as a vampire he had even less use for them than that. But then he wasn't much for moralizing either. He didn't hate the bear that killed him and he didn't figure deer or rabbits or birds blamed whatever predator had done them in. Obviously humans were different and he lived by Carlisle's rules because it didn't make sense to leave more devastation behind them than they had to, but neither would he tote blame around like Jasper or Edward did.

Poor thing, he thought for an instant as he looked over at Jasper again, his face still pressed into the lacy collar of Alice's dress. She caught his eye and glanced toward the end of the row and Emmett nodded. Jasper might unwind faster if he could pull Alice's emotions down over his ears like a thick hat, block out what else was going on in the room.

He stood up and shuffled his feet for a moment, still trying to keep his face serious, somber. He put his hand on the top of Jasper's head, rubbing it back and forth lightly. "This passes like everything else, brother." 

Those were the words Emmett lived by - everything humans felt, no matter how dire or how brilliant it was at the time, would eventually be consumed by the churning blackness that was the passage of time. If they waited long enough, it would all be forgotten. 

He didn't know if Jasper heard it, if it even helped him, but Alice nodded at him again before he walked away.


	4. The Gift with Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice wants something to remember Jasper by - something that will last as long as she will.

Jasper went running every day. He wasn't as fast as Edward, but it was one of his small joys in life, watching the clouds and birds and little ground-animals as he passed them by, inhaling the wind on his face. In the woods around their home, he could run even on clear days, when the sunbeams flickered through the leaves, and light and dark flashed over his face. 

He came home cheerful-- his runs always replenished him-- passed Emmett and Carlisle practicing fencing in the yard (sheer delight from both of them, which put him in an even better state of mind) and headed upstairs to their bedroom, where he could sense her waiting. There was a strange mix of excitement and tension, mixing into something frothy and bittersweet and he wondered already what the tension was for.

Alice had been sitting on the bed, drawing in her journal, but she was already looking at the door, a smile on her face, when he opened it. "You have a good run, baby?"

He stopped short, immediately distracted by the sight of her in front of him. She was wearing a knee-length dress in a sparkly black fabric and she glittered like the night sky. He recognized it immediately as something she had made; it fit her too well to be sewn by any other hands. He twitched his jaw back and forth as he studied her. Of course she had made this dress to sit off her pretty shoulders and it made her neck look long and so kissable - 

She was watching him with a cheeky grin by the time his gaze made it back up to her face.

"Are you refreshed?" Alice asked, teasingly, setting her journal aside. She had been sitting with her legs tucked underneath her and now she stretched them out to reveal her black thigh-high socks. She bent her knees to make her skirt puddle around the top of her legs, allowing an inch of a bare skin on her thighs to peek out at him. 

She knew he loved her covered up because it gave him the chance to unearth her like some hidden jewel, and he loved her in black because of the way her skin shone in comparison.

Jasper gave her a cautious nod, closing the door tight behind him. He walked over to the bed, focusing on the look in her eyes and trying to figure out what her nerves were about. As he bent to kiss her, his gaze caught on the open page of her sketchbook and he tilted his head to study it. "Those are pretty. New jewelry designs?"

"Something special I'm working on," she replied. As he straightened, she kicked her foot into the air and planted it firmly on him. She walked it down his chest to his waist, then began working her toes under his shirt as he continued to study the page. 

She had drawn dozens of delicate shapes, some fluted half-circles, some smooth and flowing, all abstract. It rang some distant bell for him - had he seen her draw these before? No, he didn't think so. But what...

When she began trying to work his sweatpants off with her other feet, he gave her a look and grabbed her feet. He bit her heel through her sock and she pulled away with a smirk. 

Alice watched him walk away to remove his shirt and drop it in the laundry basket. She knew if she said nothing, he would come sit on the edge of the bed, pick up his book off the nightstand. She would creep up behind him, scrape her nails down the line of his ribs, braid a tiny plait into his hair. She'd fit herself in front of his book and pretend she wanted to read along with him. She loved to make a pest of herself sometimes, crawl and clamber over him like a kid on a favorite jungle gym. Sometimes he wrestled her, lifted and tossed her in the air, catching her with one arm, and sometimes he played the stoic, bending over his book like he couldn't be bothered while he quickly undid buttons, teased his fingers down the front of her.

It was tempting to give up on her plan and do nothing today but him, but this was her best chance to get something she wanted even more. 

Alice also knew, even right now when he was in a lovely mood, it would be a battle. Humans all seemed to think if they could see the dimensions of time the way she did, all their problems would be solved. Ha. 

The only benefit she had was the chance to watch things play out, rewind and pause, change the setting and hit play again. To discover the upsides or the disadvantages to every approach. But then she had to live it - and no one could surprise her like Jasper.

"Do you like my sweetheart neckline?" she asked, drawing his eyes back to her and running her fingertips along the edges of her dress.

"Beautiful," he nodded, taking in all of her in a glance and she grinned. 

"Thank you, baby. Would you do something for me?" was her opening volley. She bounced a few times, her dress fluttering up a few inches higher every time she did and of course, he watched her with a grin as he pulled off his shoes and socks. Distracting him with her skin would help. Probably. 

"Now how could I say no to my wife in a sweetheart neckline? It's almost cheating to be so pretty. What little thing are you wanting?" He lined up his running shoes back on their rack in the closet before he padded barefoot back to the bed. 

"Who said I wanted something _little_?" she laughed back. "Now don't say no until you hear my explanation." 

Jasper had bent to kiss the back of her knee and now he hesitated, his mouth a whisper away. "Why would I say--" 

Then he envisioned the sketches on the open page of her journal again, the fluted half-circles she had drawn over and over. He knew those shapes. God, he knew them better than anyone.

He drew back, his eyes wide with horror and anger, his jaw already setting itself like stone. 

"Don't say no right off!" she protested, bouncing down to her knees and stretching her arms out to him. "Talk to me!"

"Of all the things, Alice, all the things in the world. Please don't ask me for this." He turned away from her and walked over to the bay windows Esme had designed for their room in this house. Since he was shirtless and it was sunny, she could see the hundreds of reasons for his hesitation.

They covered his arms and back and chest, even his ears and the back of his neck. He folded his hands together and hunched his shoulders, feeling the pull of the scar tissue on his muscles -- not painful exactly, but always there. He felt like a mangy coyote sometimes, surrounded by such physically perfect specimens. It was the nature of their kind to be alluring, to call out to any potential victims without speaking a single word.

But his was a different kind than the rest of her family. (Certainly much different than hers, the very opposite. She claimed that's what made them fit together so well.) He was the beauty of a cold silver blade flashing in the dark, the technical marvel of a bomb rigged to demolish a building, floor by floor collapsing into dust. The beauty of violence, a tool built for a specific end. It always amazed him how Alice reacted to him, how she didn't seem to see his body the way he did.

She had floated this idea once or twice before, casually, but if she was drawing sketches, it meant she had a plan in mind. He closed his eyes and pictured her skin, the immaculate porcelain expanse of it, gleaming in the light like a field of untouched snow.

He loved the way he could skim his fingers over her and not encounter a single scar or bump - she didn't even have freckles. And he would know; he had seen and tasted every centimeter of her, had memorized her so well he could draw her bones from memory, and did, sometimes, in biology classes. 

Jasper heard her bounce again and then she took flight off the bed and soared across the room. She landed on his back and he didn't even jolt with the impact. Alice wrapped her arms and legs around him, clinging to him and pressing her head into the top of his spine. He reached one hand back to her and she fit her palm in his, their fingers interlocking. He took a breath and her scent and her emotions started to cloud his mind. 

She wasn't playing fair, he thought. She was flooding the room with her love, sensual and all-encompassing. It went to his head like a slug of moonshine and it settled in his gut like warm homemade bread coated in creamy hand-churned butter. Home and paradise - he had them both in one person. 

His shoulders relaxed and his head bent low, the sun shining through his hair, and her lips moved through the golden strands as she showed him all the holy carnality in her heart. 

Alice adored him in the dark, but in the light he was something else altogether. A masterpiece of the human form. She traced his scars, dragged her fingertips along the sensitive raised skin and kissing the ones within reach of her mouth, writing her name across him with the tip of her tongue.

Some stories she knew and some she didn't - some even he couldn't remember, the places that were scars piled on top of scars. It was the older ones or the deep ones or the few in strange places - his armpit, his toes - that stood out to him. The biggest ones she thought of as old friends, signposts she loved more and more as the years ticked by. 

"You'll never see yourself as I do, and I suppose I can't be too sorry for that, because it would give you a more swollen head than Rose." He huffed out a laugh. "But I love every single part of you. Your beautiful scars," she moaned a little as she ran her fingers across them and he closed his eyes and felt his tongue swell in his mouth. "They show how strong you are, how determined. How you survived the worst things our world had to offer. Jasper, when I feel them under my hands, I'm so proud I want to burst. You're my warrior." 

He looked up and caught her eyes in the reflection of the window glass. She kissed his shoulder again, her soft open mouth on his ancient skin. Jasper tried to hold onto the emotion in her words. He never believed anyone would be proud of him again, not for anything other than his ability to defend and to wound. Proud of the way he became monstrous when he fought, like Maria had been. 

But Alice was proud of his strength and his tenderness both. She thought the mere fact that he had survived long enough to love her was a marvel. And he did. Oh, he did.

"And more than that," she continued, her voice going softer now, "your scars prove you had a past. They're reminders of what happened to you, physical traces that no one can ever, ever take away." Her pain at her own forgotten past seared into his mind. It was always more intense to him than his own hurt, and he swung one long arm around to grab her and pull her around his body to hold her tight. 

In return, she clutched his face, holding his cheeks still and careful between her palms so she could make sure he understood her reasons. "I want you to give that to me. I want you to scar me-- so I'll always have something that marks me as yours, no matter what happens."

"Nothing will take me away from you, Alice." The thought of it made his defenses rise, his muscles tighten. His abs laced up rigid against her body and he fought to stay present in this moment with her. "Are the Volturri--"

"No. One day, I think, but not yet. But you don't know what might happen, Jasper, the way I forgot before--" She tugged at her hair with her fingers, like she could drag the memories out of her uncooperative mind by force. 

He kissed her, moving her in his arms to cradle her against his heart. He wasn't even aware that was how he liked to hold her, she thought as she pushed her fingers through his curls. 

"That's not going to happen again," Jasper reassured her as he kissed his way to her ear. He whispered low, "You're never going to lose me, not in this world or any other." He had never meant anything more. Let them take him apart, he will crawl back to her skinless and boneless. He will be her scarred knight, her favored watchman. If they kill him, he will wish his soul back from hell, send it to her on a breeze so he can wind around her bare shoulders. He will be her eternal blanket, if he can be nothing else.

"I want to believe that," she whispered back, letting him kiss her over and over, whispering her fears in between the movements of their mouths. "I can't imagine a day when I look in your eyes and I don't know, down to my toes and up to my eyelashes, that you're my husband. But, Jasper, surely I had people I loved before. Don't you think? A mother, a father, some kind of family - and I forgot them. There were days before you that I spent wondering - what if I passed them on the street, would I know them? Would someone ever come running up to me and throw their arms around me and say my name?" 

This was the battle he couldn't fight, the problem he couldn't fix. Alice's memories were as gone as they had been in 1920, and no one, not even Carlisle or Rosalie or Edward with all their medical knowledge (of both human and vampire anatomy, physiology, and psychology), had any idea how to make them return. 

He studied the fear in her eyes, the longing, and finally, he nodded.

"All right. Just this once." 

She made him study the pages with her. There was one shape she had drawn over and over. It was long and curved and looked like a J from one angle, a raindrop from another. Upside down, a blossom curving, on the verge of opening. 

"Are you sure?" he asked, watching her trace it with her fingernail.

"Yes," Alice nodded emphatically. "This is my favorite." 

Something sparked inside him at the idea of it, one of those hidden barbaric desires Jasper tried to suppress, the ones that broke out of him after a good hard fight, or when someone or something was threatening her. _She was his,_ came the whisper, _all and always his._ It made him want to run away with her to some isolated place, to secret himself away with her in the highest tower. That part of him liked this idea more than he should. 

"Where would you like it?" he asked, pushing that little voice down deep and she pulled her dress over her head. He kept his gaze on her face, struggling to be clear and serious and undistracted and she smirked.

You'll have to look at some point, her eyes winked at him, and so he did. 

Please forgive him, he can't help it. He knew in an instant he would mark her the way she wanted and he would love it - he did already. 

Alice was so irresistible, her teasing eyes and thin neck, a ripe cherry mouth smirking like an impudent young god. And she was _touching_ herself in front of him - her soft fingertips running so lightly over her pink nipples, budded roses in a field of snow-white skin. Then the lines of her ribs and her hips, the lacy black panties covering her. She ran her hand up and down her right thigh, teasing the top of her socks, the stretch of skin between black wool and damp black lace. She finally paused at a spot high on her inner thigh. 

"Where no one can see it but you," she whispered and his eyes darkened even further. 

Alice knew his possessive streak because the same one ran through her. She would trade or save or destroy the world for him. From the moment she opened her eyes in the Mississippi backwoods, with no name, no past, no idea what she was, she had been longing for something-- or someone. A companion, eyes to see herself reflected in, arms to hold her newborn self, a voice to explain this world. How could she ever feel real if she was unseen, untouched, alone? 

Then through the dark, he had appeared to her, like a bedtime story she was telling herself. And if she had seen a thousand perfect princes in a thousand different tales, she couldn't have loved any of them as she loved him, from that first glimpse. 

And then, a few days later, the Cullens showed up, only three of them then, Esme and Carlisle listening to Edward playing the piano in a small cottage. She saw a shadow image of herself and that blond stranger sitting on the floor. 

They could be her family. They _would_ be her family, she decided when she opened her eyes. She would have everything she wanted.

They were the future she constructed her world around. It seemed only fair, since she still felt, in a way, that she had dreamed them into life. They were her magic, her bedrock, her truest things. 

"It'll hurt," he warned her, laying his hand over hers, rubbing like he could impart warmth and her skin could hold it. "The spot will burn for a day and stay tender for another two."

"It's fine, Jasper," Alice said, her wide clear eyes humbling him with the look inside them. No fears, no hesitation, only trust.

Jasper bent her leg back. His sharp incisors were already gleaming with venom when he exhaled against her skin and it already burned her. She arched a little and he held her down harder. "Hold still," he warned her, "I want to do this right for you."

He kissed her skin, licked it. And as he bit down, Alice murmured, "Against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness," over and over, like an incantation to keep away the pain. The words made his mouth wetter, made his chest hurt. He swore he felt his heart pound and the feeling made him shake. He held tight onto her leg so he wouldn't mess up her design. 

He poured his venom into the small crack his teeth had created. He dug his teeth in and burned her skin apart and it hurt her the way it had hurt to love him for alone. All those years she spent trying to figure out what she was, how to tame her hunger and control her mind, to ready herself for their future. And that first moment they saw each other, the love inside her so intense it perfumed the room like flowers and he looked gobsmacked, his dark eyes darting over her face as he tried to place this strange feeling rioting through him. 

It only took a few minutes before he finished, and he kept his head bent, studying the mark from every angle, to make sure he had created exactly what she wanted. When he knew he had done it right, he finished with a sigh, "Against all discouragement that could be." 

Jasper took a bracing breath before he looked at her face. She was sucking her cheeks in, but her eyes looked-- not too bad. Actually, he corrected, she looked happy, her dark eyes sparkling up at him like bits of jet.

"Here," he went to her bureau and picked up a hand mirror, passed it to her so she could evaluate the mark herself. "Are you pleased?" he asked as she studied the reflection in silence. 

"I love it, Jasper." Alice wanted to rub her hand over the spot, but she didn't want to smear the careful work he'd done, so she contented herself with the burn. The feeling of his venom turning solid, sewing her skin together. "How do you feel, seeing your mark on me?"

"I didn't need to cause you pain to know that you're mine," he said, moving to the headboard of the bed and pulling her upper body into his lap, careful to keep her legs still so the movement wouldn't jar her wound.

She eyed him mischievously, fluttered her fingers through his hair. "Yes, but you like it, don't you? Knowing it's there?"

He can't stop himself from smiling back at her. "Maybe. Maybe I do." 

"Ha!" she crowed. "I knew you would!" 

He did not blush because he couldn't but he did roll his eyes at himself. "I can't help it-- anything that touches you becomes beautiful, even this." He stretched his long arm out, traced the spot, so lightly she only felt the slight breeze from his hand moving in the air. She leaned back into him, closing her eyes and sighing with pleasure. 

Over the next few weeks, she caught him watching it when he thought she wouldn't see, when they showered or bathed, when she was dressing. She always did a private dance inside her head when she noticed it. 

For her too, her tattoo had benefits beyond what she could have imagined. Alice had always lived more in her head than in her body, more abstract than actual. When she saw or felt the mark on her skin, it brought her back into her own skin in a beautiful way.

And when she turned to him the first night after he marked her, they hadn't stopped for hours, until her throat was hoarse from all the cries she muffled in his shoulders and they were both limp and disoriented from pleasure. Love-dizzied, she thought to herself as they clasped their hands tight, her head tucked beneath his. They were damp with venom and she barely had the strength to smile and still they kissed each other, nuzzled into the scent they each loved the most.

But it was another night, a deeper, softer one, when he took his turn to shock her. It was the type of night where they filled their room with candlelight and held each other in silence while they drifted off together into their memories. It had been hours or seconds since they had spoken and his wide thumb finger traced her scar again and again.  
"Would you do it to me?" he asked abruptly, his voice hoarse with hope.

She was so stunned she lurched up and the tiny flames around them flickered in the small breeze she created. "You want me to scar you? Truly?" 

She hadn't seen this coming, had never imagined he would want a mark like that from her. Alice knew how complicated his feelings about his scars could be, but now he was filling her with his joy. And pride - the deep-down, fulfilling kind that came from him discovering he could have something he didn't think was possible.

He watched her hands run over his arms. So many, so very many dead, decades of ruin and ugly destruction and she touched him like warmth. Like forever. How could she think he would wear her mark with anything but pride?

He smiled at her astonishment and tried to explain. "These are from people I killed to survive. I should have one from the person I would give my life for, shouldn't I?"

"You should think about it," she cautioned him, her dark eyes still wide. "Make sure it's what you want. I thought about mine for years, Jas. Oh, and you don't want to pick a bad design, you might regret it later--"

Jasper grinned at her and Alice broke off. 

"Alice, anything you give me will be the best thing. It always is."

In end, he insisted she pick the spot herself, and she choose the top corner of his forehead, a spot that would be hidden by his hair most of the time. His face was clear and unscarred, and she was vain enough to want her symbol to stand alone. 

He laid on the bed as she had, though he told her she could do it standing up; the pain was something he was familiar with, an old companion he wouldn't be affected by. But she insisted on treating him the way he had treated her, cautioning him to lie still until the burning ceased. 

Alice knelt over him, studying him for a long moment until he thought she might become distracted by other desires. The way she straddled him, he could see the curved edge of his scar on her, the way his venom had hardened and become simply and forever a part of her skin. It would sparkle in the sunlight, twice as bright as the skin that surrounded it. 

She kissed his spot as he had hers, licked it, and then bit. She had chosen a circle for her mark, and she pressed carefully with the edge of her top teeth, using her fingers to help her trace the design. 

When it was done, she rose up. Compared to the hundreds of scars on his body, this very small circle looked almost like an accident. Maybe a vaccination scar, or a remnant of ash flying off a bonfire. No one would know off-hand that it came from the tiny mouth of his mate. 

"What do you think?" she asked as she handed him the mirror to study her design. 

"It's... fitting," Jasper said at last. He raised his eyes to look at her. "Endless, like us, and small and perfect, like you." He laid his hand next to the mark, then reached out and pulled her against him. "It does feel-- special. Not like the others. Because we chose it. We can look at these spots and remember this feeling, how we wanted--"

"To be marked by each other?" Alice finished. "I know. I'll remember this forever," she tapped the side of her head. "No matter what happens, I'll look at your mark and remember how well I was loved once. And how well I loved you," she whispered, tracing her fingers around the mark she left on him.

"So very, very well," he teased her and she laughed, nestling her head into her spot on his shoulder as they settled back against their pile of pillows. He sighed with pleasure, thinking how she was a part of him now, in his body the way she was in his world and his mind, his thoughts and his waking dreams. Not only under his skin, but in it. "I suppose I understand why people become addicted to tattoos now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lines Alice and Jasper recite are from Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. "Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”


End file.
